The cursed
Die Verfluchten is a historical and fantastic novel by Wolfgang Hohlbein published in 2005 and the eighth volume of the Chronicle of the Immortals . The story of two vampires in search of the secret of their origins takes place in Libya in the 16th century .
action
Sword master Andrej Delãny and his Nubian companion Abu Dun moved on to Malta after their adventures . In the middle of the Libyan desert , however, the two vampires are caught in a murderous ambush by slave traders . Instead of looking for their salvation in flight, they want to be put in shackles in order to travel on with the desert inhabitants. But when they face the robber Ali Jhin and his three hundred men unarmed, they realize that they acted a little prematurely when they preferred the company of slave traders to fleeing through the desert.
In captivity they get to know the enigmatic Nubian Meruhe, who, like herself, is a prisoner, but has almost the status of a queen among slaves. She not only possesses great wisdom and knowledge of the land, but also has enigmatic healing powers. When she is separated from them in Ali Jhin's desert fortresses, Andrej and Abu Dun free her and the other prisoners and flee with them into the desert. When the slave traders catch up with them and surround them at an abandoned oasis, Meruhe unleashes a khamsin , a deadly desert storm that wipes out their enemies and covers everything in sand.
Andrej and Abu Dun later wake up alone to find two rested and saddled horses with which they set off towards the Nile . For a while they hire themselves as the bodyguard of the merchant Mustafa Bo, until they meet Meruhe at the slave market in the city of Mardina, who is currently being sold to the Emir Faruk. They free her from his fortress, but have to realize at the last moment that she had deliberately captured and sold in order to get to Faruk and kill him. As they flee together, they are stopped by a mysterious group of white-clad figures; When Andrei attacks one of them, who calls himself Seth , the latter brutally deprives him of his supernatural powers.
Meruhe later explains to Andrej that Seth is an immortal like the other strangers and that she herself is immortal, but that they have not been traveling the world for about a hundred years like he and Abu Dun, but for millennia. Therefore their experience and their knowledge of their own powers are many times more pronounced; the withdrawal of strength by Seth is only a defensive measure, the effect of which diminishes over time. Andrei succumbs more and more to the enchanting charm of the mysterious Meruhe, and for the first time in a long time the solid bond of friendship between him and Abu Dun threatens to tear.
background
In this volume, Hohlbein has chosen one of the driest places in the world as the setting: In terms of climate, the Libyan desert is one of the driest, even hyper-arid regions on earth. The annual mean of precipitation is between 0 and 5 mm, whereby the precipitation can also be completely absent for many years. In addition, the precipitation usually occurs very spotty and often only in the form of short thunderstorms.
expenditure
- Wolfgang Hohlbein: Die Verfluchten , vgs 2005, ISBN 3-8025-3539-1